


in vino veritas

by shouldbeworking



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Canon Compliant, Excessive Drinking, M/M, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:41:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28720668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldbeworking/pseuds/shouldbeworking
Summary: one drink goro is slightly more talkative than usual. two drink goro is very adamant that he’s not feeling tipsy at all. three drink goro is slutty. four drink goro is quiet. five drink goro is sad, and six drink goro is already asleep.ren is there for all of them.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 21
Kudos: 238





	1. One

The first time Ren ever had a sip of alcohol he was fourteen years old. His father set a glass of red wine on the kitchen counter in front of him and told him to drink just enough to recognize the taste. _And then never drink it again!_ he’d said—a slight twist on a common mantra _. Alcohol is the devil’s drink—killed your uncle, and it’ll kill you too if you don’t watch yourself!_

For Ren, who had just started his third year of junior high school, “enough to recognize the taste” turned out to be about half a mouthful. And then Ren’s dad turned out to be a piece of shit, so his second sip is going to be right now. November 12th, 2016.

It’s all Ryuji’s fault.

“To the Phantom Thieves!” Ryuji calls out, holding out his full beer can to the rest of those foolish enough to join him: Ann, Futaba, Yusuke, Ren himself, and Akechi. (Makoto doesn’t want to drink. Haru doesn’t like this flavor of beer, which was a statement so surprising Ren forgot to follow up on it in the moment—though, it does sort of make sense in a roundabout way because this is all her fault. Morgana is a cat.)

Five out of the six of them cheers and respond: “To the Phantom Thieves!” while the last chuckles performatively: “To the Phantom Thieves.”

Then, Ren braces himself and sips. They all do.

The taste is… underwhelming, honestly. Anticlimactic. And he doesn’t feel any different.

“Well?” Makoto asks, almost shouting from the opposite end of Ren’s attic like she could catch a case of mild teen delinquency if she were to get too close.

Ann shrugs. “I like wine better.”

“Course you’d say that.” Ryuji takes another long drink, scrunches up his eyes and nose and swallows hard. Ren can almost see his fourteen year-old self reflected in his friend, gagging in surprise and disgust at a drink that wasn’t made almost entirely out of sugar. “You just, uh, don’t know how to appreciate good quality beer.”

So, Ren was pretty sure even before all this that Ryuji had never had one alcoholic beverage in his entire life. But he’s not about to call him out on it. Bro code, etc.

“Uhhh pressing X to doubt.” Futaba says, having no such restraint and/or code. She points an accusatory finger at Ryuji. “You had no idea these were beer when Yusuke brought ‘em in, I was there.” The haphazard, overly dramatic way she’s waving her can around makes Ren worry for his shitty attic floor, and she jabs her finger again at Ryuji, then Yusuke. “This sucks by the way. Tastes like soda gone bad!”

“Wha—you don’t know anything about anything! I totally knew—”

And there they go. Arguing again. Ren sighs, takes a quiet sip of his drink. He isn’t sure why he bothers to be surprised anymore.

Yusuke has the right idea at least. Completely disengaging from the fight, he’s now wandering away toward an empty corner of the attic, taking tentative drinks from his colorful can. He’s earned it, Ren supposes, considering this is all his fault.

So—hold on. If Yusuke's on his own, Ann Ryuji and Futaba are bickering in the center of the room, Makoto Haru and Morgana off to the side talking on Ren’s mattress that means… means he’s realized far too late that leaves him alone with—

“What do you think of it, Ren?” Akechi asks. Ah, hell.

The stranger masquerading as Ren’s friend-slash-Detective Prince turned Phantom Thief is right next to him, standing just the tiniest bit too close. He’s leaning against Ren’s shelves, holding his can of beer in a casual way that screams _I practiced for this_ , somehow. And maybe he did. He probably did.

“I think the taste probably isn’t the point,” is what Ren decides to respond with.

That makes Akechi laugh pleasantly, like he does at most of the things Ren says. Faker. “You might be right,” he muses, peering carefully at the label around his beer can. “Let’s see… 3.2 percent, it says here. So I can’t imagine anyone will be feeling much of anything. If the taste isn’t the point and the alcohol isn’t the point then what is the point, I wonder?”

Ren takes a moment to think. He’s not sure if he always took a moment to think around Akechi or if that’s a new habit he picked up thanks to the knowledge of certain treacherous, murder-y things he’s recently learnt about the guy, which is great because he never knows how he should be acting in a situation where he really, _really_ should not be changing his behaviors at all or else risk raising the suspicion of the dude planning to kill him in cold blood, the same dude who is staring intensely at Ren, waiting, and Ren is not about to ask what percentages have to do with anything or what _3.2_ is actually supposed to mean because that would be admitting defeat and he doesn’t know if he always took a moment to think around Akechi but he sure does know he never once admitted defeat to Akechi and that sure as hell isn’t changing now, so—

“Yusuke liked the label design,” Ren shrugs, steering the conversation to safer territory.

Akechi blinks, speechless. Ren does a little internal fist pump— _got him_ —and they both take a moment to examine their cans, the multitude of colors splashed in what has to be a completely random pattern around them. “The label? It certainly is… something.”

“Bold?” Ren offers.

“Ah!” Akechi blurts out. His eyes go all wide and his entire upper body shakes as he laughs, making his school jacket stretch a little tight around the shoulders. Ren wonders briefly if he sizes down on purpose to be a show off before promptly shoving that thought somewhere else. “Bold, yes, a perfectly apt description for—what is this? An elephant, perhaps?”

Ren peers at the abstract blue blob. “I thought it was a tree.”

“But there, isn't that a trunk?”

They scoot closer together and huddle over Akechi’s can, peering deeply at the blob that curves brazenly around it. Ren can’t see the elephant but _can_ see a joke, so he says: “Tree trunk,” which makes Akechi laugh again, _ha_. Ren is just racking up the points today, isn’t he?

“I have to ask—how on Earth did Kitagawa-kun manage to acquire these?”

Ren shifts the two inches required to bump their shoulders good-naturedly. “If I tell you are you going to turn him in?”

“Surely you know you can trust my intentions by now. I'm one of you for another week, aren’t I?” Akechi tilts his can in a cute little cheers motion and winks before he takes another drink, and Ren’s heart plummets from the top of his throat all the way down to his feet.

Oh, right. Trust. Intentions. One week. Ha ha.

“Ha,” he forces out a quick laugh and then takes a long, long drink from his beer. He’s seen people do that in movies when they’re pissed off or they need time to think and right now he is definitely feeling both. It doesn’t help all that much but it does convince him to not immediately punch and then flee from his future murderer, like an obvious idiot.

The warmth radiating off of Akechi, still suffusing through Ren’s shoulder where they’d touched (where Ren had touched him, Ren had initiated that because he forgot, again) makes his stomach turn unpleasantly. And his scent is so clear in this close proximity, that familiar combination of clean laundry and artificial cedar. Likely from whatever body wash he uses.

Fake, fake, fake.

Ren buries his disgust somewhere deep inside to deal with later (later, definitely), hopes it doesn’t end up close to that stupid thought about Akechi’s shoulders, tries to pretend nothing has changed, and takes a breath. Ren can be fake too and a fake Ren, full to the brim with a heady cocktail of hubris and blissful ignorance, would probably say something like, “But after that all bets are off, right? I wouldn’t put it past you to find a use for some valuable blackmail.”

A pleased expression flashes across Akechi’s face for just a moment before he tilts his head and pouts. “Do you really think so little of me?”

_Yes, I do. I really fucking do_. “Nah, I’ll tell you. It’s not that juicy anyway. Yusuke really had no idea what they were—Haru gave him some money for drinks and the cashier just didn’t check his age,” he explains truthfully. Probably thanks to some combination of Yusuke’s unique countenance and his complete ignorance as to what the six-pack of cans really were—he wouldn’t have seemed nervous or suspicious at all. “Then Ryuji figured out they were actually beer and here we are.”

“Fascinating… it’s almost unbelievable that the cashier wouldn’t check. Why, I’ve heard the adults I work with complain about having their age checked constantly and, forgive my bluntness,” Akechi says, with a sly little smile, a secret just for the two of them, “they look a great deal older than Kitagawa-kun. I wonder if that poor cashier was simply caught at a bad time… or perhaps it was Kitagawa-kun’s unique disposition which threw them off guard.”

“I thought the same exact thing!” Ren straightens up, pulse picking up in excitement before he immediately, _immediately_ hates himself. And then hates himself for hating himself—he’s supposed to be acting like everything is the same as before, he’s doing the right thing. Even if he doesn’t mean it. Or does.

Ah, his drink is empty.

“Ha! Once again we’re on the same wavelength I see,” Akechi says. “Talking with you is always so enlightening, you know, I can’t help but—”

_Who are you?_ Ren thinks at Akechi.

“—the moment I heard your first argument,” Akechi says. “I wonder how often it is that two like-minded people such as us find each other? Though, perhaps like-minded isn’t the correct phrase, considering—”

_Is any of this real?_ Ren thinks. He wants to grab him, shake him until he tells the truth, just one truth. The can in his hand bends with a small metallic clink as his grip tightens around it. _The clothes, the scent, your eyes, your smile? That voice on the phone, plotting a murder, two murders,_ my murder _, so casually—was that real?_

“—valuable insight. In another world, perhaps you could have helped me solve crimes instead of perpetrating them,” Akechi says, and smiles, and laughs so pleasantly. “You have a very keen eye which is—”

_Who are you?_ Ren screams behind his teeth. _What are you?_ He wants to reach up and dig his fingers underneath Akechi’s chin, deep into the skin—to rip his mask off, to claw at the pieces underneath to find if anything there is genuine—any part, any piece, any word he’d said, any second of the hours and hours they’d spent together—

“Hey, Detective Prince!”

Ren snaps out of… god, whatever the hell that was. He turns along with Akechi to find Ryuji holding his phone up to the two of them. “How much d’ya think a photo of you would go for right now?”

“However much you’re imagining I guarantee it’s not as much as I would get for turning you in for being a Phantom Thief.” Akechi jiggles his beer can in a friendly ( _threatening?_ ) way, then upends it to finish his drink.

“I’m about to turn you in myself,” Ren grumbles at Ryuji, which to his great distaste Akechi catches and snickers at.

He shouldn’t be pissed, considering Ryuji probably saved him from doing something rash and stupid and kind of horrifically violent, but—damn it. It’s the beer’s fault. 3.2, whatever that means.

Ryuji joins him and Akechi after that, easily dominating the conversation and acting far more drunk than Ren thinks he ought to be, his own dubious mental state aside. Then Ann and Futaba meander over, then Yusuke, and Makoto finally steals Ren away with a nervous look on her face.

“ _Probably best to limit your contact with him, don't you think?_ ” she whispers quickly into his ear.

Ren nods, takes a seat on his mattress and watches Akechi silently for the rest of the evening. Morgana says something to him, Haru says something to him, whatever. A few feet away Akechi is deep in conversation with Ren’s friends—smiling and winking and laughing along—and Ren, despite any and all of his better judgement, wants nothing more than to know what he’s saying.

So yes, it’s probably for the best. Makoto is right. Besides all the Palace excursions and the billiards games and the Mementos runs and the quiet evenings in Leblanc and the Phantom Thief meetups and the dinners at their jazz club and the near-constant occupancy in Ren’s thoughts… best to limit his contact with Akechi Goro.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sry this took a while i was buying a house

January finds Amamiya Ren a little lost. Wandering aimlessly through the cold streets of Shibuya, Akihabara, and now the brighter main avenues of Shinjuku. Tonight, like most nights, he has a companion along with him. This one is special—not very furry, too big to fit into his school bag—but Ren still appreciates the company.

Both of them can be a little lost together, he supposes.

“I hope you have an idea of where we’re going tonight,” his companion grumps. “I heard the temperature may go below freezing tonight.”

Ren glances to his side, takes in Akechi Goro—walking briskly in step, his chin tucked inside his scarf, gloved hands hidden inside his pockets, the tip of his nose a lovely shade of pink. “Are you cold?”

“No,” Akechi says, too quickly to be taken seriously. “I simply thought it a point of interest. You do have a plan, don’t you?”

“Course I do,” Ren answers. (He doesn’t). Saved by a stroke of incredibly good, suspiciously good timing, he stops short in front of a familiar neon sign that reads _Crossroads_ and quickly announces, “we’re already here.”

Akechi stops too. Does a pitch-perfect comedy double-take. “Seriously?” He sneers. His little pink nose all wrinkled in distaste at the sight is awfully judgey for a former, reformed… or, hopefully yet ambiguously reformed… hitman.

“C’mon, live a little.”

Akechi’s forearm is warm and solid under his grip as Ren steers them both inside, skirting around a rowdy group of salarymen on their way out.

The bar, just like Leblanc these days, is busier than Ren has ever seen it before. Folks of all types, young and old, drunk and extremely drunk, seem to be having themselves a grand old time at the bar and the various scattered tables while Lala scurries to and fro to make and deliver drinks. And there seems to be no Ohya tonight which is a bummer, but maybe makes things easier too.

“Oh, honey!” Lala calls out when she spots them loitering at the door. She points a well-manicured finger toward the back of the bar, “Table’s free over there—it’s a mess! I’ll be around to clean it off in a hot second.”

Ren ignores whatever face Akechi is making now, “Thanks, Lala-chan!” he shouts over the noise, grabs Akechi’s arm again and pulls him through the crowd. Akechi follows, willingly. Ren doesn’t know why he’s always surprised—despite everything that’s happened there was never a time Akechi didn’t follow him when he asked.

The table, once they finally reach it, is certainly a mess. Napkins, leftover food, empty glasses galore. Ren slides into the booth seat and scoots his way down to make enough room for Akechi, careful not to brush the front of his clothes against the edge of the table. The bar is considerably warmer than outside (thank god honestly, Ren was freezing his ass off) so he starts sliding his scarf and jacket off and notes that Akechi is doing the same.

Until Akechi stops, his arm still stuck halfway through his coat sleeve. “ _Ren_ ,” he hisses.

Akechi glances meaningfully down at the mess in front of them where—oh. Oh, it’s almost perfect. Amongst the empty glasses there are four little ones, lined up in a row: clean, untouched, and full to the brim with an amber liquid.

It’s so perfect that it has to be entrapment. Is Lala watching? Ren glances her way, finds her still busy with a customer at the bar.

“Really?” he says quickly, quietly. His coat is still stuck around his waist so he wrenches it off and squishes it into a haphazard ball beside him, his heart pounding now at the prospect of a _scheme_.

Akechi gingerly picks up one of the small glasses between his thumb and index finger. He does his own scan of the room to make sure no one is watching, then mocks slyly, “Live a little.” And then he tosses it back with a quick motion of his head—god, that was so fast—which means Ren’s fingers are already halfway around a glass too. 

A few nonsense thoughts flash through his mind in the moment it takes to bring the glass to his lips: could Lala get her bar taken away for this (it’s a perfect world and they won’t be caught, so probably not), _alcohol killed your uncle, it’ll kill you too!_ (shut up), does this mean that if Akechi jumped off a bridge Ren would jump along with him (ah shit he definitely would, wouldn’t he).

He tries to do it fast, both because he really doesn’t want to be caught and because that’s how Akechi did it, so the taste doesn’t actually register until he’s about to take his second shot.

And, ah—it’s. It’s bad.

It’s cold medicine on a nauseous stomach bad. It’s Takemi’s knockout-horror-of-the-week bad. It’s that one time he didn’t grind the coffee right and Boss still made him drink it to teach him a lesson to not waste good beans bad. It _burns_.

The second shot goes down, not as elegantly as the first. It burns and burns and he can taste this one now too, even stronger than the second. Still sitting on his tongue, in his throat, behind his nose, it’s _horrible_ , the worst thing he’s ever—he needs water, he needs something, he needs to _not throw up in front of_ —

“ _Ah!_ ” Ren yelps.

He reflexively bats his attacker away, giving him a few extra smacks on the arm for good measure. Akechi just cackles in a way that can only be described as literally evil. “God—what the hell—” it was Akechi, of course it was Akechi, he’d _pinched_ him, pinched the top of his thigh really damn hard when all Ren was doing was keeping his dinner and—eugh—drinks down in his stomach where they belonged.

“ _Sh_.” Akechi says, completely unsympathetic to Ren’s plight. He snatches the shot glass still clutched in Ren’s hand, oops, and slides it back onto the table. “Honestly, are you a thief or a child?”

“You’re calling me a child when you just pinched me?” Akechi just shakes his head at that, starts haughtily folding his own scarf and coat because he clearly couldn’t think of a comeback in time. “Do you even know what those were?” Ren asks.

“Strong,” Akechi responds. He tilts his head toward Lala, already making her way over to them. “You can ask your friend here if you’re interested beyond that.”

“Hello, boys. What can I get for you?” Lala says with her trademark welcoming not-quite-a-smile. She starts clearing the table off for them, seemingly none the wiser, and Ren can’t help but feel a little guilty for taking advantage.

“A drink for each of us, please,” Ren says anyway. “Whatever the house special is tonight.”

“House special is a Corpse Reviver No. 2, so I hope you two like straight lemon juice with an orange peel,” Lala says. “Kidding, of course. I’ll throw some soda in there. But only cause I like you.”

She finishes up the table, giving it a final wash with the flourish of a practiced expert, then dashes away without another word, only a surprisingly cheeky wink.

Lala Escargot in a real, genuinely good mood. Well, now he’s seen everything.

Stupid Maruki.

“Mission successful, Joker,” Akechi drawls with an unnecessary amount of sarcasm as soon as she’s out of earshot. “Congratulations.”

Ren pinches him back.

Despite the strange and clandestine start to the evening, they end up spending their time as they always do: idly chatting about random bullshit. Akechi asks how Ren thinks their infiltration is progressing. Ren blows him off, because he’s tired of thinking about it. Akechi shifts gears easily and explains an impressive-sounding psychology book. Ren suspects he’d only skimmed the Wikipedia page on it, but keeps that to himself. Their non-alcoholic drinks are delivered, and Ren is finally saved from the awful aftertaste still lingering on his tongue. Akechi tells him about a case he worked back in September—a real one, not one he faked, which was a little awkward to clarify. Ren starts to feel weird. Or is he overthinking that?

Ren blinks, stares at his glass, the surface of the table, tries to clear his head. Or is his head already clear? The problem is he’s too aware of his body, probably—he can’t figure out what’s normal or what could be alcohol-induced.

And what does alcohol do, exactly, besides make a person stumble around and act like a bumbling idiot in a comedy skit? Does that really happen? He’s worked at this bar himself before, quite a few times, and he’s never actually seen it. It was more like the customers would get louder, and that’s all. Ohya would get loud too, and a little confused, but that was really all. What will happen to him? Is it already happening?

Ren takes another sip of his drink and then rolls up his sleeves, realizing only when Akechi trails off that he’d forgotten to keep paying attention to what he was saying.

“Shots kicking in, are they?”

“It’s just hot in here,” Ren says defensively.

“Mm,” Akechi hums. “Well, I might have been wrong after all. Whatever those were—it couldn’t have been very strong because I’m not feeling _an-y-thing at all_ ~” He sing-songs the end of his statement a bit, which is weird. “Perhaps they weren’t shots after all and what you’re feeling is a mere placebo effect.” And then Akechi sort of… melts. Forward and down onto the table, propping up his head in his hands.

Now, Ren recognizes _that_ behavior from his time behind the bar.

Akechi doesn’t seem to care how he looks and smirks up at Ren, looking almost comically smug. Cat who got the cream, teenager who got the alcohol. Ren has seen a lot of different expressions cross Akechi’s face over the last year, revealed to him slowly like a detective-shaped advent calendar, and this latest one is definitely his favorite. “Ever had this much?” Akechi asks. Discarding the placebo theory, then.

“Can’t remember,” Ren lies.

He can’t go revealing the last time he had even a drop of alcohol was… god, it was with Akechi again. All the way back in November, back when everything was different. Wait… is Akechi a bad influence?

Wh—of course he is, what the hell is Ren thinking? Obviously he’s a bad influence, he knew that already, duh.

“Alright then,” Akechi sighs, “I’ll let you in on a little trick. Alcohol dulls the reflexes, you know. It’s not noticeable normally, but—”

Akechi sits up then, turns to face Ren, and then just… starts looking around. But only with his eyes, like he’s taking an eye test or something. It’s one of the strangest things Ren has ever seen, which is saying something, Ren has seen a lot of weird shit this past year, and the fact that _Akechi_ is the one doing whatever this is…

“The response time of the eyes noticeably slows, see, if you try it you’ll—”

And that’s when Ren can’t hold it in any longer. 

He bursts out laughing, which actually makes Akechi smile back reflexively for half a second before he quickly fixes his expression and pouts. “Be _serious_ please, I’m trying to explain something to you.”

“Sorry,” Ren chokes out, not sorry at all. “I’m serious. Very serious. Explain away.”

Akechi squints at him. “No, I think you’ll have to just see it for yourself. Try it.”

“Moving… my eyes around?”

“Yes, then you’ll see! You’ll see they’re slower—well, except they aren’t,” Akechi stutters a bit, “because we haven’t drank a lot, but when they _are_ , I mean, when you—”

Ren holds out a hand. “Okay, okay, I’ll try it.” And then he does. He looks up, down, left—and starts laughing again. “I can’t.”

“You’re not doing it right!”

“Okay, then you show me again.”

“No,” Akechi huffs. “You’ll laugh at me.”

“Yeah, you looked really dumb. Is that gonna stop you?”

Akechi’s expression goes cold and stony. Calculating. He chews briefly on his bottom lip, a tic Ren never noticed before. And then he does it: looks all around the room and at the same time tries to explain very quickly, like he’s explaining how to diffuse a bomb with five seconds left on the clock, what exactly the point of his weird thing is before Ren starts laughing. And, of course, the bomb goes off early and he doesn’t get very far at all.

And then Akechi coughs. Brings a hand to his mouth and coughs again. Coughs a third time—which is when Ren realizes that Akechi is not actually coughing but laughing as well—a hacking, inelegant, snorting sort of sound now, unsuccessfully hidden behind one of his fists.

There’s only one explanation: amazingly, beyond all hope or reason, Akechi Goro is _tipsy_.

Which means… ah. Yes. Ren is, in fact, feeling something.

Their laughter dies down eventually. Faster when they start getting strange looks from the other patrons around them. And Akechi resumes his post—his refined, dignified _melt_ —back down on the table, cheek cupped against his hand, head tilted toward Ren just so. A little smile on his face.

He’s so different now. Almost a completely different person, but somehow still so Akechi, like some core part of him can’t help but shine behind whatever part he decides he has to play.

Ren likes this version, he decides. The absence of that horrible fake cedar scent Akechi used to wear is nothing less than a blessing, and he likes the flat, limp quality of the tawny hair on the top of his head. A little greasy. A little imperfect. A little closer to real, like Ren could reach out and—and grab him. His shoulder, his arm, his hand. He could touch Akechi Goro and he would be warm and real and alive, like anyone else. Even before he’d thought Akechi had died… even before them, he’d never felt quite so accessible in the way he does now.

But he shouldn’t touch him. Right? Right.

Excitement bubbles up in Ren’s stomach, even as he tries his best to calm down. How lucky is he, really? To have the stars align to bring Akechi back to him like this, to bring them to this bar on this night, and to let Ren see him as he is now. He can’t help but wonder, wonder like he always does, if the Akechi he’s seeing now is closer to or farther from Akechi’s true self.

“So, who leaves shots behind like that anyway?” Ren asks, when the silence between them grows too long.

“People who don’t care about money,” Akechi mumbles. He melts a little further down, hums a little tune Ren recognizes from the jazz club. Starts drawing something on the condensation of his glass.

It’s a smiley face. Akechi even gives it eyebrows.

“Another sign of drunkenness is an increase in the volume of intrusive thoughts,” Akechi says, almost to himself, as he completes his drawing. “You know what those are, don’t you?”

Akechi turns to stare at Ren so intensely that Ren can’t help but grow self-conscious. He’s always been like this too—singularly focused, to an almost uncomfortable degree. The kind of stare that makes you want to recite your best grade, straighten your posture.

“Uh,” Ren says intelligently, because someone hit the pause button on his brain. “Like… it’s like standing in a high place and thinking ‘what if I jumped.’ Or, um, violent stuff. The kind of stuff you’d never actually do.”

“Yes. They can be nonsensical, violent, even sexual.” The intensity of his gaze grows impossibly stronger, almost all-consuming, and he continues quietly, “Are you… having any of those thoughts right now?”

If his brain had been on pause before… well, it’s now completely and utterly stopped. Deleted. Gone.

_What?_

Those kinds of thoughts—does Akechi want him to…? There’s a reason behind everything Akechi does, there always is, and the way Akechi is staring at him right now. Is he trying to send him a message? Is he _flirting?_ With _Ren?_

He had thought earlier about reaching out and touching Akechi, and well—now that he thinks about it—and if that’s what Akechi wants, if that’s what he’s getting at with his weird little comments and questions—well, wouldn’t it be just as easy to kiss him? Ren totally could, he’s kissed people before… _two_ girls, actually. He’s experienced. He knows what he’s doing. He could kiss a guy, probably. Guys have mouths, it can’t be that different.

Akechi has a mouth, he thinks stupidly.

With barely a thought, Ayame from last year becomes Akechi. Ren spent months thinking about that kiss, he remembers every little bit of it. Same lean forward, same light touch to the back of her ( _his_ ) head—Ren was really proud of that move. Akechi’s lips, his tongue, weird and wet but like a really unexpectedly good weird and wet. The softness of his nerdy little sweater vest under Ren’s fingers, the slight huff of breath Ren would feel against his nose, and then—

An ear-piercing whistle—a _wolf-whistle_ —from somewhere close to their table slams Ren out of his reverie. 

Out of his reverie, back into Crossroads. January. Reality. He and Akechi both startle and search for the source of the sound—find some middle-aged asshole, drunk as hell, walking away from them and laughing with a friend at their expressions.

God, Ren really does hate people sometimes.

When he turns back to Akechi, the two of them sharing a quick roll of their eyes at the interruption, he’s suddenly struck by what the hell he was just doing.

Ren was sitting here, barely an arm’s length away from Akechi Goro, imagining what it would be like to _kiss him_.

Why? What the hell is he thinking? His palms are sweaty. Ren quickly wipes them on the tops of his thighs, tries to be subtle about it.

Akechi idly fixes his shirt collar at the same time. Adjusts his sweater vest ( _soft, under Ren’s fingers_ ). He’s the one to speak up this time, clearing his throat and saying, “I’m telling you all these things for your own good, you know. If you ever were to have a _real_ drink. I hope you find my insight useful.”

“I do, thank you,” Ren mumbles awkwardly, still coming to terms with what he’d done. What he’d imagined he’d done. But there’s really no difference at the end of the day, is there? How can he explain away fantasizing about Akechi Goro—no matter how much he may have been goaded into it?

He can’t. Can’t even blame it on the alcohol. He’s seen Ohya knock back way more than Ren shots and when she “hit on him” even she knew it was a joke. And now here Ren is, two shots in and fantasizing about making out with his murderer-rival-friend.

It was just so easy to imagine, is the thing. He can still picture it—the lean forward, the kiss, more, _more_ , stuff he’s never even done before. Intrusive thoughts breeding more intrusive thoughts, like the floodgates have been opened.

And now it’s been quiet for way too long.

Ren sips at his drink, tries desperately to remember what book Akechi was talking about earlier so he can get him talking about normal stuff. Tries desperately to stop thinking about how Akechi might taste.

“Do you actually like this?” Akechi says. He regards Ren with some similar measure of intensity as he had earlier. Drums his fingers against the table before continuing, “Sitting around. Doing nothing. Listening to me talk at you for hours?”

“What?” Ren blinks at that, his mouth stuck a little open, working against words that won’t come out because, once again, his brain can’t seem to work fast enough to parse them.

“Before—it was all for a reason, a purpose. I was gathering information on you and you were clearly doing the same to me. But now, what’s the point?”

The point? Ren… Ren was having fun. He thought Akechi was too. He was having fun even before all this, actually, back when he was supposed to be “gathering information,” definitely should have been, but kept forgetting his goal every time.

He feels like he should say something, anything— _I like spending time with you, I like that you’re kind of weird and maybe too smart for me, I like listening to you talk and I think I_ —but also feels like he shouldn’t. Feels like if he does, if he even opens his mouth, something else might come tumbling out along with the rest of it.

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” Akechi chuckles quietly. It sounds fake.

The moment’s over.

For a while after that nothing passes between them but a few more stilted attempts at conversation and awkward sips of what’s now mostly ice water. Finally, mercifully, Akechi sighs and rolls up a sleeve to check his watch. “It’s getting late,” he says coolly, scooting his way out of their booth. “I have to use the restroom, and then we should leave?”

It’s a question, technically, but Ren knows he doesn’t have a choice. He starts gathering his things, leaves money on the table, aimless and exhausted thoughts rattling around his head.

“Bye,” Akechi says, almost the moment they step outside. And then he’s gone.

Ren shouldn’t be surprised or offended. Akechi is always like this at the end of the nights they spend together. Short, curt, and then vanished like a ghost, in an instant. Ren left in his wake to find his way back home alone. They’ve done this a hundred times before, but this time leaves him colder than usual.

Probably just the weather. It’s almost February.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me [@shouldbewerking](https://twitter.com/shouldbewerking)


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